The Ostracons Of Europa

摘要

There was something transcendent about the pattern etched into the ice-bound Europan surface looming 53 kilometres above Ricardo Cuerta's submersible. The implacable gravity of Jupiter rewrote the great frozen palimpsest again and again, the pack ice heaved and rilled with fissures that hinted at the mysteries of the deep. That's how he'd seen it from orbit. Now the intense blue-white glare of the spotlights seemed to be all that prevented the eternal midnight of the subsurface ocean from imploding his mind.